10,000 Birds

MARCH 15, 2021

Guyana is an Amerindian word meaning “land of many waters” but it could just as easily mean “land of many birds”. That’s because this fascinating part-Caribbean, part-south American country holds well over 800 species of avifauna making it without doubt one of my top three countries in all of the continent to visit. Guyana is WILD.

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Guyana Otters South America Colombia 279

10,000 Birds

APRIL 24, 2024

Visiting Guyana brought with it the unavoidable expectation of seeing some mind boggling species – some endangered, some emblematic, others downright bizarre. Before we boarded the flight to Guyana we already knew that probabilities of seeing one of the target species was slashed to near zero. And waited.

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Guyana Brazil ALA Eagles 241

10,000 Birds

JANUARY 17, 2024

Ardent readers of this blog would realise by now that I have been chronicling a few days spent in Guyana last year – I felt that a single post or two would invariably exclude far too many sightings of note. Familiar, but beautiful regardless: Blue-headed Parrot Another small parrot species landed on a tree in the distance.

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Guyana Parrots Trinidad Monkeys 241

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 30, 2021

From there, we entered a side tributary full of Ringed and Amazon Kingfishers , with Chestnut-fronted and Scarlet Macaws in flight… and then the noise: groans, croaks and grunts… and the smell… of this 65 million years old species, so old that the last dinosaurs must have fed on them!

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Dolphins Colombia Otters Monkeys 264

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 19, 2011

It is my best bird because it is just such an incredible species, and looking at it made me realize that I had temporarily stopped to fully appreciate birds during the stressful last few years. This year I watched them from the day they arrived , until two chicks successfully hatched, the northernmost breeding record for the species.

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2011 Birds South Korea North Dakota 212

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 1, 2021

Hudson; and a primer on geological history, including the continuing zoological effects of the “Great American Biotic Interchange”; and a travelogue of an extraordinary river trip through Guyana. English is the official language of Guyana, with a distinctive cadence and idiom.

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Guyana South America Washington DC 263